After an event there's always *that* discussion - what worked, what didn't, what needs fixing/mending, what we should get for the next show or do for the next show.
The first thing on the list (once all the washing up and washing had been taken care of) was a cordon to go around the pavilion to replace the borrowed wicker fence - we never realised we needed a fence until we were offered use of that one at Abbey 23, and of course then we figured we should really get our own :-) Unlike some groups we don't fence off the entire encampment but there are some places we don't want people wandering through, either because it's dangerous (the kitchen and the wood-chopping area) or because there's a chance things may get accidentally broken (the pavilion, where we have a lot of glass and ceramic pieces, and inside most of the tents (similar reason). 99.9% of the people who visit our display are wonderful and interested and careful, but one gets a little scarred by the few thoughtless ones - the woman with a horde of sticky-fingered, toffee-apple-coated children who stood and watched as they wiped their hands on my wall hangings, the old dears deep in discussion as to whether the item they were attempting to bed was a plastic or bone needle (bone, took a couple of hours to make, and I intervened before they snapped it...), the parents who put my loom weights around their child's neck and walked out of the display and feigned surprise when asked that they return it, the children who came into the kids' play area and belted the carved and painted toy animals so hard the legs broke off, the chap who got into my bed (between the sheets) with his boots on because he "didn't realise I slept there", the other chap who opened the trunk next to my bed (where I keep my personal/modern stuff and which now has a lock on it) and wittily announced that he didn't know they wore jeans and joggers in Medieval Times... All reenactors have similar (and sometimes more harrowing) tales so we use cordons and polite little 'keep out' signs.
I decided I didn't want something as substantial as a wicker fence - hard to pack and transport to events - so tablet-wove a 14 metre tape and sewed little felt flags on it, then painted up some little wooden stakes to support it and it's done its job very nicely ever since :-)
Another issue was the group's sign - evidently people had trouble seeing it, and in a way I sympathised as it was perhaps a little small, and may have got lost from view with the pavilion as a background - bling against bling, so to speak ;-) I made another, larger, fancier (!) one out of canvas and that seems to have solved that problem :-)
I'd been toying with the idea of using QR codes to allow people to find out more about what they were looking at (explanations, documentation, references and so on) but didn't get them done for Abbey23 - producing the QR codes themselves was quite simple, but writing the pages they led to took a lot longer than I'd thought... so I got stuck into that so I could try it out for Abbey24. The codes needed to be sufficiently unobtrusive that they didn't detract from the medieval vibe of the event, but obvious enough people would use them; and the web pages they led to needed to be fairly simple and quick to download onto a phone because the internet coverage around the Abbey area is not fantastic - and the event gets 10,000 visitors a day, plus reenactors, plus stallholders, plus staff. I settled on using Blogger pages (see the link to the Oltramar Encampment Tour in the right-hand column).
We've ended up with a QR code disc for every tent and also for Nat's scribe display and the spices display.
I resurrected the tiny 2 metre square tent that'd been Nat's before I made her her current (3x3) one and fitted it out to be the kids' tent - they need somewhere not only to store their toys and to play in, but also a space to retreat to that's their space - an event with 10,000 people a day can be quite daunting even for adults.
I think the worse thing about looking at photos of an event is that you realise that things like hangings and blankets are getting shabby and need replacing, trunks need repainting or covering, tentage needs cleaning... and there's always just a bit more embroidery/sewing/painting/etcetera than there is time for >.< and so things get triaged to get done before the next event, or pushed back to be done afterwards.
No comments:
Post a Comment